Aria’s Uncle on Pretty Little Liars May Be the Key to the Uber A Mystery

The final 10 episodes of Pretty Little Liars will begin airing very soon but unless you’re literally on the show, you’re probably still very much in the dark about what’s going to happen. Who killed Charlotte DiLaurentis? Will Ezra ever come back to Rosewood? Is Mary Drake really Spencer’s biological mother? Season 7A left all of these questions unanswered, but none of them is as important as the show’s current central mystery: Who is Uber A, aka A.D.?

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These past few weeks, I’ve been rewatching old episodes of PLL in an attempt to piece together the puzzle before season 7B premieres. It should come as no surprise to regular PLL viewers that I’ve not had a ton of luck, but a couple of episodes in season two reminded me of a character I’d forgotten about: Scott Montgomery, Byron’s mysterious brother with a vague history of mental illness. Almost every A has had a history of mental illness. That's a controversial reality of the show, given that people who suffer from mental illness are too often portrayed as villains. But operating within the universe of the series, in which all roads lead back to Radley, the mention of Scott gave me pause, especially since his character has never appeared in person. At that point in the show, Aria’s normally useless brother Mike was struggling with his parents’ almost-divorce and subsequent reunion. After a brief crime spree where he broke into Emily’s garage and stole camping equipment, and broke into Spencer’s house, and attacked his own sister, Mike holed up in his room, checked out at school, and stopped speaking to everyone. He even semi-accidentally hit his mom once, which Ella hid from Byron because she didn’t want him to overreact.

Ella believed that Mike was dealing with depression but Byron implied that he thought something else was at play, something that he’d seen before. In the episode “Picture This,” Byron mentions his brother after his tough-love strategy doesn’t work with Mike. “I don’t think we should be giving Mike space,” Byron says. “My parents gave Scott space, and you know what happened to him.” (No, we don’t, Byron, please elaborate!) Ella asks Byron why Mike reminded him of Scott, and Byron says this: “Because when I went up to talk to Mike, he was rolled up in a blanket. It was like I wasn’t even there. And I saw my brother. What if there is something more going on here?”

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Two episodes later, in “I Must Confess,” Mike still hasn’t made any progress but Byron thinks that’s because he needs to see a psychiatrist. According to Byron, Mike’s psychologist thinks a psychiatrist visit might be wise given Byron’s “family history.” If the talk therapy isn’t working, is it possible Mike is dealing with something that needs to be treated with medication? Mike eventually got his burglary habits under control and though he doesn’t often appear on the show, he seems fine enough. Whatever he was dealing with has been forgotten about, just like Spencer’s Adderall addiction.

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Byron doesn’t offer any specific details about what happened to Scott so this is where I had to let my imagination fill in the gaps. Assume that Scott is alive and that Scott went to Radley, which, as we all know, is the only mental hospital in the state of Pennsylvania. Now remember that we don’t know who Charlotte’s biological father is but that it’s probably someone Mary Drake met at Radley. Could that someone be Scott Montgomery?

Now assume that Mary Drake either doesn’t know what her other child looks like now or was straight-up lying about the child being Spencer. What if the second child is Aria, and Byron and Ella adopted her because Scott couldn’t care for her? And what if — get ready — A.D. stands for Aria’s Dad? And what if Marlene King got Chad Lowe’s real-life brother Rob Lowe to play him? IT WOULD BE PERFECT.

After having this breakthrough Monday night, I looked around to see if I was the first person who had this genius idea and of course I was not. There are a few Redditthreads about Scott out there, some of which offer alternatives for the identity of Scott's child. What if Scott is the father of Wren, another popular candidate for Uber A? Or the father of Spencer, assuming she’s truly Mary Drake’s daughter? Or what if he died before even getting to Radley and Byron bringing him up was just another red herring?

Even if Scott doesn’t turn out to be A.D. or Aria’s father, though, his history of mental illness is an important piece of evidence in another very popular theory — that Aria is A.D. and suffering from mental health issues of her own (again, in keeping with the show's track record). But that’s a theory for another day, for another person who has time to comb through 100-plus episodes for shots of Aria looking at herself in the mirror. I’d rather use that time praying that Rob Lowe's going to show up in Rosewood.